He Is the Gift

Hello Everyone!

Happy December! :D I hope you all had a wonderful Thanksgiving! It was a great day here in Greencastle, everyday is a great day here in Greencastle! So first things first, we got transfer calls this weekend...well I should say a transfer text since Sister Munoz and I are staying together here for another transfer!!!! Yep, I get to finish it off here in the land of the blessed and I am sooooooooooooooo excited about that! :)

So this week was good! We had a really cool church tour this week with a less-active sister and her nonmember kids. It went really well. The spirit was there and some big steps were made in their conversion process. We are going to hopefully start teaching 2 of the kids this week! :) Last Monday we had a half p-day so at one, we started out in doing missionary work! We visited lots of people and were able to do some good teaching both on Monday and Tuesday. Sadly, I woke up last Monday with a nasty cough that has been hard to work through so the rest of the week wasn't as productive as the beginning was. #missionaryprobs Luckily I am serving in a branch with awesome members who have many ideas and solutions for helping rid the cough that have been working pretty well! Slowly am I getting better which is great because then I can focus more on sharing the gift!

For those of you who don't know about it yet or haven't watched it, the church has put out a new video for Christmas called "He is the Gift." It is a very, very good video that can help us remember the true meaning on Christmas. Why we really celebrate this special time of year. The church is encouraging all to share the gift with everyone. So as missionaries, we have a big role in helping spread the word about the gift. We have been given pass along cards specifically for the video and are working our hardest to share the gift because it is so important to share! I am really excited for the miracles that will come these next couple weeks as we as a mission work on getting the message out there to those in Indiana. It is so important to remember why we are all here, why we are celebrating Christmas, and what is possible because of Jesus Christ. He really is the greatest gift that has been given and we need to remember and be grateful for that gift everyday of our lives. That is where true happiness lies. If you haven't seen the wonderful video yet, you can find it here: http://www.mormon.org/christmas

We had a great Thanksgiving full of fun and food! In total last week, we had 4 Thanksgiving dinners, 1 on Sunday, 1 on Wednesday, and 2 on Thursday. All of them were very yummy and I felt very loved and taken care of! On Thursday we had our p-day, so when we weren't at the members eating, we were at the church playing card games with the elders! It was such a fun day, we played a lot of Hearts. It was nice to be able to relax and it helped me realize how truly blessed I am in my life. I am so thankful to my Heavenly Father for so many things and am so blessed. Being on a mission has completely changed my life and I am so grateful for the experiences I have had here and the ones that await me these next 6 weeks!

I love you all and don't forget to #ShareTheGift! Have a wonderful week!

love,

Sister Abbie London

1. My awesome companion made stockings for us!

2. Thanksgiving card games

Happy Thanksgiving Week

Hi everyone!

This has been a wonderful week, all of them are usually wonderful! Just like every week we have some bumps along the way but when you are doing your best and on the Lord's team, it works out!

So we had a slow start to the week and weren't really able to get into to many homes. This week we saw a lot of less-actives and are seeing some progress with some! There is a less-active we are working with whose kids aren't members and we were able to sit down with her and the kids and teach a restoration lesson to them! They seemed pretty interested and we should be taking them on a church tour tomorrow, so that will be great! We are hoping to have the Branch Mission Leader and his grandkids, who are the same ages as the la kids, come with us! We are trying to get some fellowship over there! It will be good.

It was really cold at the beginning of the week but we endured and spent some time tracting out in the elements...I don't really like tracting but we need to do it so we do...even though we have lots of awkward things happen! Hey, the awkward makes the best stories I suppose! We met a couple cool potential investigators that we will hopefully be able to meet with soon.

Our Friday was a little rough....we were just sitting there finishing our companionship study when the elders called. They were wondering if we were coming to district meeting. We told them yeah at 11, we will be there since that was the usual time we had it. Then they decided to inform us that it was at 10. Everyone else in the district was there waiting for us...luckily the meeting was in Greencastle and not Plainfield so we weren't as late as we could have been. Sister Munoz and I were both a little angry about it and it was pretty hard at the beginning of the meeting to pay attention. After sneaking away to pray for some help, I was able to focus more and actually get something out of the meeting. To add to it all, we were apparently supposed to bring a lunch to the church to all eat together but we didn't get informed about that either...we were feeling pretty good about ourselves after that meeting! (Sarcasm in my voice) Everything worked out though and we were able to still have a fun time together and learn lots. It was a bit of a struggle though.

We had a really cool experience on Saturday to go down to Terre Haute and help out with a service opportunity! :D I was super excited! The zone leaders down there called on Tuesday or Wednesday morning to see if we would be able to come help out at the NCAA Division 1 Cross Country Championships! So we headed down and got there a little too early, another miscommunication. So since we were an hour early and I was in my old area, we went down into town more and got Square Donuts! :) It was such a great feeling to drive through Brazil and Terre Haute again! I was able to talk to the elders in the great Honey Creek ward and get the update on everyone! It was pretty fun! They didn't really have us do anything until after the races were over, so we basically stood around and watched....let me tell you that cross country spectators get about just as much running in as the participants! I had no idea that it was such an intense thing! People were running all over to be able to watch their people run by! I was a little scared for a bit but we survived just fine! It was fun to see the teams from Utah playing! There were some from BYU, they were excited to see missionaries, and I even saw some SUU Thunderbirds out there running! :) It was a fun experience. WE walked around the course at the end picking up trash left behind....that took a while! It was super fun though!

The talking in Sacrament Meeting yesterday were all on gratitude and during the second talk I did a lot of thinking about what it means to be grateful! He shared a story about a man in the world's largest garden show. He was a gardener and was super excited to see the world's largest flowers. He spots some of the flowers and starts running over when he gets cut by a giant thorn. He see's all the thorns around and grabs a branch and starts cutting down the thorns. People gather all around and are staring at him. He is all done when he realizes they are looking at a sign that says, "World's Most Beautiful Rose Bush." He was blinded by everything else and missed out on the beauty around him. The speaker then talked about how we all have the opportunity to notice the roses or the thorns in our lives. Our attitude shapes us. If we chose to be grateful for the thorns we face, like our trials and hardships, we will be able to better see the beautiful roses at the end of it. So I want to encourage all of you to keep this in mind throughout your lives. You chose what to be grateful for. In True to the Faith it says, "You cannot be bitter, resentful, or mean-spirited when you are grateful." Having a grateful heart really is the best thing to help you become more Christlike! It is something that should occur all year, not just this week! I love you all and hope you have a wonderful Thanksgiving! I am thankful for you all and the love and support you give me!

love,

Sister Abbie

PS I failed at taking picture this week so here are some that we took during studies this morning !:)

Hoosier Holiday

Howdy y'all!!

I hope you all had a wonderful Thanksgiving! I know I did! This week has been really good! We have met a lot more of the members and have been working with less actives. We have slowly been making our way around the ward, I still get lost a lot however. I can find our way home from a couple streets though, which is good!

Our Thanksgiving consisted of weekly planning in the morning, followed by doing some of the normal Monday activites such as cleaning the apartment and the car. At 2:00 we went to this members house for Thanksgiving. It was them and then Sister Jeffery and I. The smallest Thanksgiving I have ever been too! I think it was the first time that I have seen the Turkey carved at the table! It was definitely a different Thanksgiving than I was used to but it was very nice! I really enjoyed spending that time getting to know these members! The food was good and I was so stuffed I thought I would never be able to eat again...and then they brought out the fresh apple pie and ice cream. I thought I would explode! I didn't though so life's good! We talked about the different things we are grateful for and it was awesome to see how many different aspects of the gospel that I am thankful for! It truly is such a blessing to me in my life! I am so blessed to be a missionary!

On Saturday, we went on exchanges with our Sister Training Leaders. We blitzed our area, which means both companionships stayed in Indy 1, which was awesome because it allowed Sister Jeffery and I to get more work done and to see more of the area! It was a day of miracle! We both had 3 other lessons, exceeding our weekly goal of 5. We picked up 2 new investigators and were able to get in contact with one of the investigators that the previous sisters were teaching. It was awesome! I want to share one cool experience. So every week we do service at this thrift store called Humble Impressions. The owner had recently lost her step-son and has just been through a lot. So Sister Saunders and I are trying a less-active on Saturday morning. She was sick and wasn't able to come talk to us. So Sister Saunders suggest that we try some of the neighbors to see if they are interested. We knock on the door to the right of this less-active and the lady who opens the door is the owner of the store. It was the day of the memorial for her son and we were able to go in and talk to her about how Heavenly Father has comforted her thoughout her life. We left her with a Plan of Salvation pamphlet and ended up having a really good chat with her. It was such a testimony builder that there are people everywhere that need to be comforted in some way and this gospel will do that. It was one of the many miracles I saw that day!

I love you all and hope that you all have a great week! 2 Nephi 32:3! Read it!

Love,

Sister London!

Abbie and Sis Saunders taking cool pictures on exchanges